Staten Island Advance/Irving Silverstein"Almost everything I read, we've thought about 10 times over, and thought of 10 more things they haven't thought of," said Robert Marin, CEO of New York Wheel LLC.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - The New York Wheel isn't quite a done deal -- but Rich Marin, president and CEO of the company spearheading the project, is confident it will be by the end of the Bloomberg administration.

"It's a process -- and it's a long process -- but we are well into it now," Marin said in a telephone interview with the Advance Thursday.

How far they've come already is a testament to the behind-the-scenes work Marin has done with the city, and specifically the New York City Economic Development Corporation, over the last two years.

Before signing a pre-development agreement in July, he spent months proving that New York Wheel LLC would be up to the task of building a giant observation wheel in the city, he said.

"It's a little bit like a simultaneous equation," he explained. "You have to get everybody comfortable, and once you get everybody comfortable you can sit down and close the transaction."

But the much-heralded announcement of the Wheel, and a nearby but financially unrelated plan to build a large outlet shopping mall, doesn't mean those projects are shovel-ready. Like any major project -- especially one on the city-owned land for which New York Wheel will sign a 99-year lease -- there are plenty of regulatory hurdles to jump.

"It's a very comprehensive process. This is the first time I've dealt with the city in this kind of depth, and I'm impressed and amazed with how rigorous and how complete that process is," Marin said. 

THE PROCESS TO COME

The plan for the New York Wheel will have to undergo the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure -- or ULURP -- which involves meeting the needs of city, state and federal agencies, and then reviews by the Community Board, Borough President, the City Planning Commission, and ultimately, the City Council.

Those reviews will make sure the whatever is built is environmentally sound, Marin said -- and not just in terms of Mother Nature, though the operation is slated to be thoroughly green and sustainable.

"It's the shadows that this thing casts, it's the traffic pattern that it could generate" that will be considered, he said.

He's read comments from Islanders, he said, who are worried developers and the city didn't consider certain issues that could arise, like parking and traffic. But through their own planning and through the thoroughness of the process ahead, Marin said they have.

"Almost everything I read we've thought about ten times over, and thought of 10 more things they haven't thought of," he said.

Marin said the company's timeline calls for getting ULURP certification by April -- but he emphasized they're well under way in working toward that goal. "All of those things are fed by what we do between now and April," he said.

There will be a public scoping meeting held in the beginning of November, he said, which will be the beginning of the Community Board approval process. Residents can come out and weigh in on the project, he said.

"We're right on track now, and we work very hard to stay on track," he said. 

WHILE MAYOR REIGNS

One reason they're doing so is in hopes of having the plan approved before a new mayor takes office in 2014.

"We are very intent on getting this approval done during the Bloomberg administration," Marin said. "There's nothing strange about that -- who in the world would want to straddle two administrations, no matter what the administrations are?"

It probably helps, though, that Bloomberg has thrown his public support behind the project. Marin said the city support comes from New York Wheel's efforts of showing that they are up to not only funding the Wheel, but constructing it and managing the process. 

PROVING THEIR CASE

Marin, a longtime investment banker who formerly headed Bear Stearns Asset Management before its sale to JP Morgan Chase in the midst of the financial crisis, came to the project before the project came to Staten Island. Investors had previously tried to place a giant wheel on Governor's Island.

"It sounded like a fun project," he said. Obviously with this type of project, at the earliest stages, that's all it is -- fun."

But the possibility became much more realistic when the proposed site for the wheel shifted to an area the city had long hoped to develop.

"I think what really turned the tide in terms of everybody's perspective of this is the choice of the site -- Staten Island," he said. 

FUNDING FLOWS

He rounded up his "strong and notable" investors, he said, and he's had the opposite problem of most private equity projects -- he has more people interested in investing than he needs.

"I probably get asked every other day from somebody if they can invest," he said.

But giant observation wheels have a high "talk-to-ticket ratio," Marin said. Many more are talked about than are constructed.

"The city is very, very careful about who they will get into something like this with," he said.

So before the project was even announced, Marin helped garner support by clearing three key concerns.

The first was proving they had the right financial backing, he said. But it's not just about money.

"Number two was having the right kinds of partners that had significant experience at successfully building and completing the major sort of physical process of putting up a giant observation wheel," he said.

So New York Wheel partnered with Starneth, the European company that built the London Eye, locking them in for an exclusive deal to build a northeastern wheel, as well as bringing on top-of-the-line engineers, landscape architects, and even lawyers.

"We've taken nothing short of the best of breed in every category," he said. "And that speaks loudly to the ability to actually build this thing."

Item number three, he said, was having a management team that can pull all those elements together.

"I've run a lot of companies," Marin said. "And this is an interesting one."

And as they go forward, Marin said he's keeping people's fears, criticisms, and hopes in mind -- for everything from parking to jobs for the local community to improvements to area infrastructure.

"We want to be very good citizens on Staten Island," he said. "And we want to be good neighbors.